Here's to Pearl S. Buck...

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To them... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create -- so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off...They must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating." 
— Pearl S. Buck

I haven't been sleeping well. I lay down and my heart sprints, my mind is like a game of ping pong. I know what the problem is, how to solve it, but I'm too tired and so much work has yet to be done. By work, I mean the stuff I make sure gets done first... papers, the reading of books, the memorizing of facts, the seemingly meaningless stuff that will one day result in a diploma.


But my real work, the kind that makes me alive, waits in the corner of my common room, leaning against the couch in a reusable shopping bag... two canvases, one blank and one a half completed picture of a baby's head resting on her mother's chest, and a shoebox full of paint and brushes.


It's Saturday night, and everything else can wait. Right now, I need to create, to let the wild bird out of its cage and set it free, or I know I will not sleep tonight, and tomorrow I will be in no shape to interact with regular humans. So I pull my unfinished piece from the bag, exposing it to light. I am not happy with the color of the mother's face, it is too dark an orange, she looks like she could work for Willy Wonka. 


But I have not touched the baby's face, which in the original picture is lighter than her mother's, a very soft pink, like an exotic flower, a shade only a newborn could achieve. I mix red with yellow, and add a drop to the white puddle next to it on the palette. Light peach. Better, but it needs something else. I add a spec of red and swirl it together with the peach, leaving streaks of red. I like the design. Next, my favorite part, the smooth, hypnotic, meditative motion of brush on canvas; the color coming to life, exploding, making my retinas smile. It's still a bit dark, so I add a drop of white, than a little more. Perfect. Onto the canvas it goes, my heart slows, my mind clears, like morning after a night of wind and hard rain, and after weeks of imitated living, I am finally alive.

Highly Sensitive People are born with an exceptional gift... the gift of creativity, having the ability to make and appreciate beautiful works of art. I love to draw, paint, write, take pictures, anything, as long as I'm creating something that wasn't there before. Drawing, though, was my first love, my initial attempt at creating, the first path I took that led me to the gates of my soul.